Ban Greninja

[Expendable99]

So Walross said they wouldn't just code Protean so it would get banned, so lets just hope that they inevitably mess up and it gets banned anyways.

 

Greninja was banned back in ORAS OU, due to many people arguing that it had all the tools it needed to destroy OU: It has really good speed, great coverage moves, entry hazards, and to top it off stab on every one of its move to patch up its mediocre base 103 spatk.

 

But some people still don't want a ban, so lets open up this debate and see what other people think, personally I lean towards a ban.

 

Now lets look at PRO:

 

Arguments for a ban:

Greninja is just way too fast. PRO's metagame is disgustingly slow, and this causes Greninja's speed to shine through. Few if any people at all run speed checks in the form of choice scarfers, which makes it easy for Greninja to outpace entire teams. As opposed to Smogon OU, where Greninja had to face up against other pokemon that were able to outspeed it unboosted. The only pokemon able to do so here is Weavile afaik. If you're worried about being outsped by scarfers, you can simply just slap a scarf on Greninja instead and it's the fastest thing around again.

 

Coverage: Greninja has all the coverage it needs to beat any of its mons, with pump, pulse, beam, HP Fire, low kick, gunk shot, rock slide, grass knot and extrasensory. This can lead to a lot of predictability, and in many cases unlike other mons with good coverage types, Greninja is actually able to utilize its coverage to easily beat pokemon that would normally counter it due to protean giving the 1.5x bonus to its power. This also allows Gren to avoid potentially super effective attacks by changing its type, though honestly that's not such a big deal. All in all, the coverage causes Gren to be extremely unpredictable and puts a strain on team building, since with the right coverage it can beat multiple would be counters at the same time. Remember that Greninja's stabs are no longer its stabs with protean, which means that dark pulse is not always going to be present, which opens up more coverage slots

 

Hazards: Hazard removal is really bad in PRO, and often teams will not even carry hazard removal. Gren forces a ton of switches, and because of that is able to easily stack up a lot of spikes. On the other hand, there is pretty much no hazard removal that can come in and remove the hazards on Greninja, except for Mantine, which is pretty much never seen, in comparison to other hazard setters like Ferro which are less capable of doing things to the few defoggers we have around. The fact that it is able to set hazards also heavily pressures would be counters such as Gastrodon and especially Ferrothorn, as they hate coming in repeatedly to be worn down by spikes and attack chip.

 

We have even less checks than we do now in USUM, where it is unbanned. You have few Greninja counters, those being Mantine, Chansey, Gastrodon, and Ferrothorn, 2 of those being rather uncommon and checks such as AV Azu, AV Tang, and Clef. Compare that to USUM, where you have more defensive counters in Toxapex, AV Magearna, AV Bulu, and M-Venusaur, as well as more offensive checks that are capable of outspeeding it, such as Koko, Lopunny, Mega Zam, (Lucha to some extent after unburden) or able to live a hit, such as Keldeo, and more common scarfers such as scarf Kart. Offensive teams hardly have any way to deal with Greninja except hope for an odd hydro miss, as pretty much all of our checks and counters are defensive. Greninja will typically pick up a KO and keep claiming KOs unless you have several priority users in the back. Greninja simply puts too much of a strain on offensive, hyper offensive, and even balance teams to be healthy for the metagame. Add to that the fact that imo there seems to be nothing that Greninja is really needed for in order to maintain a healthy metagame.

 

Arguments against a ban:

4MSS: While Greninja has all the coverage it needs to beat around all of its normal counters, it is still limited by its 4 move slots, one of which is most likely going to be used up for spikes, even on the choiced sets, since it's so good at laying them down. This means that it isn't possible to beat all of its counters at the same time: For example if you carry gunk shot you may potentially have to forego carrying ice beam or low kick. Greninja also is extremely rare to find with HP Fire, which means that fire coverage is usually not too much of an issue for Gren. You will also have to run EVs in attack to improve the damage of attacks such as gunk shot and low kick in order to target pokemon such as Clefable and Chansey, which causes its special side to be slightly weaker if running mixed, which may be an issue with its low base stats.

 

Frailty: Greninja is extremely frail with its base 72/67/71 defenses, and as a result it can be difficult to get Greninja into play due to the fact that it will take decent damage from pretty much any attack thrown at it. This is compounded by the fact that u-turn and volt switch do not work properly, so more prediction is needed to bring Greninja in safely, while Greninja can't pivot out as effectively. This also leaves it vulnerable to priority moves depending on what type Greninja has changed into, though often it will not be able to be KOed by a neutral priority hit and will need prior chip from hazards and LO.

[Letrix]

Let's see how it plays out first. You cant demand a ban on something before it sees play. If it truly becomes a problem Pokemon then we'll hear the community and take measures. We're open to your opinions.

[Idkup]

Greninja's current presence is more unnerving than anything, but we'll have to see how it does in practice. It certainly has no true counters (except Porygon2), but that's true of Salamence as well... however, a large part of the ban argument back in XY was that it provided free and easy momentum with U-Turn, such that it really didn't care about its checks existing and could simply wear them down over time, as well as preventing any double switching tactics. With the weak state of fast U-Turns in PRO, it should be substantially easier to handle. Whether or not that is enough to keep it balanced remains to be seen.